Memories, Even Bittersweet Ones, Are Better Than Nothing
by OutlawQueenLuvr
Summary: Regina Mills and Robin Hood are reunited, only to be parted again. Major character death. Tumblr prompt request. Angst. Post 4A.


AN: This is not a happy story. You've been warned. OQ Prompt on Tumblr. Rated T for major character death. Angst. (Just updating this on May 11 to say, I wrote this back in February, and Regina did something super similar on the season 4 finale. I feel like magic.)

* * *

"Please, don't go. Don't leave," he stutters through choked sobs, his face awash with tears and snot that's leaking out of his nose. It's an ugly, agonizing, full-bodied heartache that wracks his whole being. "Ple- ase," he begs again, brushing blood and sweat-drenched hair off of her pained brow.

His touch is gentle, though his voice begs, pleads, demands that she not go. Oh, how she'd never be parted from him if she had an actual say in the matter.

"Rob- bin," her voice shakes as she tries to tell him all the unsaid things that have been weighing heavy on her heart since they were last parted. A searing pain in her belly flares up again, and her voice and lips tremble. She's trying so desperately to keep her eyes open, but it's getting harder and harder.

Each breath that leaves her body shorter and shorter than the one before it. "I lov-"

"No no nono-" his refusals bleed together, and her blood seeps steadily through his fingers pressed tightly around the spiral, spear-shaped shell embedded above her navel. It's orange and creamed colored, and a moment before the Sea Witch Ursula harpooned it toward him, he thought for a fraction of a second that it was beautiful. A gorgeous ocean treasure. Or at least, he'd _thought _it had been beautiful. An opinion that drastically changed the instant the love of his life jumped in between him and his oncoming fate. He puffs out an unsteady breath, his tears flowing out of his crystal blue eyes, down the bridge of his nose and off the tip and onto Regina's cheek as he bends over her, cradling her in his arms. "It'll be fine- " he wipes away the grim near her temple, but it does nothing to erase the consequences of battle, "you're going to be alright."

Regina smiles weakly and licks her lips. They're dried and cracking and turning a terrible blue. There's no coming back from this. Not this time. Not with the way she's been impaled by a magically infused death sentence.

"Robin," she finally manages without gasping for air. "No, no I'm not." So much still unsaid, so much still unfinished. If she weren't dying, she might find this all sort of comical, because this would fucking happen to her. She would spend months trying to find a way back to her soulmate, find him, reunite with him, just to lose him again. Just to lose him right as she's saved him. But she doesn't want to think about that, doesn't want to think about villains and happy endings and regrets, because if this is it, if this is their last moment, she doesn't want to waste time again, doesn't want to leave him without confessing what she's known, what he's known since their evening in front of the fireplace in her office. She reaches up one quivering hand and tries to cup his cheek, rub her thumb along his jaw. But she's weak, is getting weaker as each grain of sand slips through the narrow neck of her life's hourglass. Slip, slip, slipping by. "I love you," she breathes, smiling, beaming even as death bids her to follow, even as the pain ceases and a numbness takes over. Time running out. "More than you could ever know."

"We're not saying goodbye." His face twists in agony, because he does know. He feels it too, and as much as he wishes it weren't so, as much as he wishes for once magic could work in their favor, that fate wasn't against them, that this bloody author didn't have some sort of vendetta against his love, he knows. "Not again."

This is their last moment.

She coughs and a rattling, raspy sound comes from deep within her chest. He holds her closer to him, waits as her breathing evens out; she clings more tightly to his shirt, fingers fisting there, and when she moves her face away from the warmth of his chest, crimson mars her lips.

She's in pain. And he's prolonging it, not helping to alleviate her anguish because he doesn't want her to leave him, doesn't want to exist in a world in which she doesn't. Even though he knows how to help her. Knows that once removed, the spear in her stomach will release her to an eternal slumber.

Regina moves her fingers to rest atop his, and she grips them, the ones that are still hopelessly trying to staunch her blood flow. "I love you- so very- much, my dear sweet thief," and that does it. That undoes him. The moniker meant in jest at first meeting that slowly turned endearing sends him careening over the edge, and there's really no stopping his outpour of love and his raw, soul-stabbing torture.

He pulls her further into his lap, the sensation of pins and needles jabbing into his legs with him sitting on them at such an odd angle, but that doesn't matter.

Only she matters. Only them.

"I love you," he whispers, touching his brow to hers as she moves his hand to grasp the hilt of Ursula's spear protruding from her flesh, laces her fingers with his so he can't let go. "I love you," he says it again, and she nods, says she loves him, too, and then tells him to kiss her.

And he does. Pours all his love and wishes and hopes into kissing her. It's passionate, and desperate, and says everything else that needs to be said.

_I choose you. I need you. I love you. _I'll never stop loving you. Please don't leave me. Please don't go. I love you. I love you. I love you.__

He threads his fingers through her hair; she deepens the kiss, and then with the last bit of force she has left in her, she whispers "I love you" against his trembling bottom lip one more time and yanks their joined hands up.

The spear goes with them.

Robin gasps just as Regina does. A silent scream rents the air, and then relief passes over her face. Her eyes flutter shut, and a strangled cry leaves his lips.

Reunited. Only to be parted again.

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Disclaimer: I do not own these characters.


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